Do cosmic rays set the earth’s thermostat?

Many who argue against an anthropogenic influence on climate suggest that …

In recent years, the idea that the climate is driven by clouds and cosmic rays has received plenty of attention. Interest in the idea was prompted by a Danish physicist named Henrik Svensmark, who first suggested it in the late 1990s. Using satellite data on cloud coverage, which became available with the establishment of the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project in 1983, Svensmark found a correlation between lower troposphere cloud cover and the 11-year solar cycle.

He proposed that cosmic rays initiate the formation of aerosols in the lower atmosphere that then form condensation nuclei for cloud droplets, increasing cloud formation from water vapor. Since low-level clouds increase Earth’s albedo (the amount of incoming solar radiation that is reflected back into space), more clouds mean cooler temperatures. Svensmark claimed that this mechanism was responsible for virtually every climatic event in Earth history, from ice ages to the Faint Young Sun paradox to Snowball Earth to our current warming trend. Needless to say, this would overturn decades of climate research.

Cosmic “rays” are actually energetic subatomic particles. The solar wind shields the Earth from many of the cosmic rays coming from elsewhere in the Milky Way, so the number of rays that reach the Earth is modulated by variations in solar activity, such as the well-known 11-year solar cycle.

Early work by Svensmark and a group at CERN (we recently covered their initial results) has indicated that charged particles like cosmic rays can cause molecules of sulfuric acid, water, or other vapors to combine and form aerosols (particles about 1 nanometer in diameter). This provides a potential link between cosmic rays and cloud formation.

Understanding aerosols

Note the word "potential." There are a number of things that need to happen before those aerosols can affect cloud cover. They must increase in mass about 100,000-fold before they're the size of the condensation nuclei that facilitate water droplet formation in clouds. The CLOUD experiment at CERN may eventually be able to provide insight into that process; in the meantime, other studies have examined it using atmospheric models that simulate aerosol processes.

These studies have indicated that the number of cloud condensation nuclei is not very sensitive to the nucleation of aerosols by cosmic rays. There are a few reasons for this. First, there are many other sources of aerosols (including particles in sea spray and anthropogenic emissions), so the total change in aerosols due to fluctuations in cosmic-ray-induced nucleation is not as significant as it might otherwise be. Second, the aerosols are competing with each other to condense a limited supply of vapor, meaning that any increase in the total cloud condensation nuclei is limited.

In addition, most aerosols collide and combine with other particles long before reaching the size of a cloud condensation nucleus—a process called "coagulation." Increasing the number of aerosols increases the frequency of these collisions, again dampening the effect on the number of condensation nuclei.

In model simulations, a 15 percent increase in cosmic rays (which is about the variation in one 11-year solar cycle) leads to an increase in condensation nuclei of less than 0.2 percent. Even assuming that cosmic rays could have a significant effect on cloud condensation nuclei, it remains to be shown that this would, in fact, account for the observed fluctuations in global low cloud cover.

Rays, clouds, and climate

Since the direct connection between cosmic rays and clouds remains tenuous, the case for cosmic ray control of climate has been made primarily on correlations between global low cloud cover and solar activity. Historically, some climate events can be correlated with changes in solar activity, but there has been no long-term trend in cosmic rays to accompany the temperature rise of the last few decades.

The apparent correlation between rays and cloud cover described by Svensmark has been strong enough to maintain interest in the hypothesis; however, other analyses have suggested that the correlation may be weaker than Svensmark suggested. And, as one researcher noted in Nature, "Because the climate displays a multitude of cycles on almost all timescales, detection of a correlation among climate variables usually meets with initial and healthy skepticism." That’s especially true for correlations between data covering short periods of time.

In the latest analysis, researchers from Purdue University put together the most up-to-date cloud and cosmic ray data (their paper is currently in press in the Journal of Climate), and the update is noteworthy. The correlation that had been observed between low cloud cover and cosmic rays between 1983 and 2004 did not continue in the four years following. (Data from 2009-2010 is not yet available.) When cosmic rays increased as the solar cycle reached a low, cloud cover did not follow. In fact, it decreased instead—at a time of unusually high cosmic rays.

The authors write, “It is concluded that the observational results presented, showing several years of disconnect between GCRs and lower troposphere global cloudiness, add additional concern to the cosmic ray-cloud connection hypothesis. In fact, this has been done in the most dramatic way with the measurement of record high levels of GCRs during the deep, extended quiet period of [solar] cycle 23-24, which is accompanied by record low levels of lower troposphere global cloudiness.”

The authors are quick to point out that there are general concerns about the reliability of satellite measurements of low cloud cover, as it may not be possible to completely separate the effects of higher-level clouds. Nevertheless, the marked divergence of the two datasets is likely to be a hot topic as the research moves forward and new data continues to roll in. One thing we know for certain about Svensmark’s cosmic ray hypothesis, though: it attracts a lot of attention.

The anti anthropogenic global warming crowd, are already convinced that the cosmic ray theory explains it all and that humans have nothing to do with it. This bit of info has become their latest linchpin.

Just turn off the Sun and see how quickly we go to an Ice Age. heck, the 3 ton sat's fall, that just fell from the sky was speed up because the sun over heated the atmosphere causing it to bulge.

I 100% believe the climate is influenced significantly by the sun.

As far as CO emissions, more fuel efficient cars are helping now. Solar power will help lots, no sure why some people are pissed at Obama for funding a startup company for a new Solar Tube process. So the economy went in the dumper. I really believe that is part of the reason they failed.

Anyway Space events can have big impacts on Global warming either via how we use the energy freely given to us or how it impacts the heat of the earth.

The anti anthropogenic global warming crowd, are already convinced that the cosmic ray theory explains it all and that humans have nothing to do with it. This bit of info has become their latest linchpin.

Well, I'm having trouble with the acronym, but it is awesome. Us conservatives would help fund this in a heartbeat, if it had the ability to focus from planet-wide cloud seeding, down to a hairline beam. That'd be cool, right? A needle thin beam of cosmic rays, that could burn right through to China. Or, alternatively; you could just wait half a day. I picture a really big knob, that goes from "Storm", to "Plasma Storm".

...The AGW fanboys can be just as blind to valid opposing points as the non-AGWers.

All and all an interesting read, especially when including the links. (you should see how many tabs I have open right now) I have always thought that the answer to 'why' is much bigger than "greenhouse gasses." (not saying they don't play a role)

Plus, It has always seemed to me that this big anthropogenic climate change revelation is more of a political push by those in power. Politicians like Al Gore seem so disingenuously concerned about the outcome of our planet and instead use AGW as a platform to bolister support of their political agendas.

It's kinda maddening, I mean, can't the reasoning behind the green movement and the current push to refocus on renewable energy, be just because "we don't like the smell?" ...LOL... or for the sake of future proofing the planet?

So wait, global warming is either ENTIRELY our fault, or ENTIRELY 'cosmic rays' which vary in opposition with the sun's output?

Why do we feel such a need to collapse things to polarized (bipolar) viewpoints where things must obviously collapse to one side or the other...when outside of our mental maps "reality" is both sublime, subtle and wholly complex? Why can't we be having an effect that is intertwined with a cycle that is driven by solar wind that involves all of the other aspects of galactic & solar weather that the earth's weather is..more or less 'within'?

Also since our yearly climate change lags a few months in regards to the earth's wobble (hot months & cold months tend to follow, not end with, the solstices) why must there be a 100% correlation between a solar cycle and observed weather on the earth...?

Plus, It has always seemed to me that this big anthropogenic climate change revelation is more of a political push by those in power. Politicians like Al Gore seem so disingenuously concerned about the outcome of our planet and instead use AGW as a platform to bolister support of their political agendas.

You know he quit politics years before starting his lecture tour on global warming, right? Perhaps you should describe him as an ex-politician?

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It's kinda maddening, I mean, can't the reasoning behind the green movement and the current push to refocus on renewable energy, be just because "we don't like the smell?" ...LOL...

So you don't see why people who acknowledge anthropogenic global warming might want to focus on energy sources that don't fuel anthropogenic global warming? Really?

capsela wrote:

Wait, Obama said CO2 was causing the oceans to rise and temps to rise.

So now you're telling the sun warms the earth?????

Quick question: can you tell me in your own words how CO2 is thought to warm the Earth?

I'm sure there are lots of things that can cause global climate change, whether the change is warming, cooling, or blasting the atmosphere away in a super-heated CME. Whatever - it's a big universe. We have no idea about most of what's out there.

Here on Earth, meanwhile, the thing that denialists won't admit is that the current gradual warming trend is apparently due to our dumping mass quantities of previously sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, which is a closed system.

Killwize wrote:

...The AGW fanboys...

Oh, so now people who believe the scientific consensus are fanboys? This whole argument just keeps getting stupider.

I'm sure there are lots of things that can cause global climate change, whether the change is warming, cooling, or blasting the atmosphere away in a super-heated CME. Whatever - it's a big universe. We have no idea about most of what's out there.

Here on Earth, meanwhile, the thing that denialists won't admit is that the current gradual warming trend is apparently due to our dumping mass quantities of previously sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, which is a closed system.

Oh, so now people who believe the scientific consensus are fanboys? This whole argument just keeps getting stupider.

Except, see, you are all wrong. Scientific consensus is not a club to say "shut up, stupid." Look at the speed of light stuff from CERN. There isn't a more "consensus" based scientific theory than nothing with mass can reach the speed of light or beyond. Until CERN may have shown otherwise. Are they "trolling?" If they were treated like climate change science is treated, we'd all be calling to see if they were funded by Big Tachyon and the evil Spock Brothers, with their vested interest in the warp drive industry.

This theory of cosmic rays influencing the earths temperature survived its empirical test in the lab: cosmic rays can indeed cause nucleation. Lots more research is needed, but right now, cosmic rays are a hypothesis that can explain the "global warming" just as much as the "dirty evil humans cause climate change and need to pay taxes on air" theory.

In other words, the science isn't settled, despite cries of "how dare you go against the consensus!" I for one think that if you try to use a consensus argument to drive out the heretics, you are not a real scientist nor fan of science.

I like your use of the word consensus Brutha. Pointing out that scientists may achieve consensus on their *opinion* about a theory, but the theory itself can either still be held to be valid so far, or be proven wrong.

Ie, while our social conventions operate based on consensus, science does not--it operates on a 'method' or tool for validating theories (models) with collected empirical data. And those models that are never proven 'true', only proven false or held up for a certain set of circumstances. This also does not preclude OTHER models also fitting to a dataset, so that there can be more than a single cause for complex behavior such as a planetwide atmospheric system.

The problem with admitting to the complexity of a discussion is that it doesn't fit well with politics and human communication, especially in this post-hegelian world.

Except, see, you are all wrong. Scientific consensus is not a club to say "shut up, stupid."

It is, however, a good way to quickly summarize the state of the knowledge on any given subject if there's a consensus on it.

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Look at the speed of light stuff from CERN. There isn't a more "consensus" based scientific theory than nothing with mass can reach the speed of light or beyond. Until CERN may have shown otherwise. Are they "trolling?"

No, what they're doing is asking for people to review their work and find mistakes that could be leading to the conclusions that seem to violate special relativity. That's different from what denialists do when proclaiming that AGW is bunk.

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If they were treated like climate change science is treated, we'd all be calling to see if they were funded by Big Tachyon and the evil Spock Brothers, with their vested interest in the warp drive industry.

You mean like how Mike Mann was accused by deniers of falsifying data to keep grant money flowing to his department, how people like Killwize claim politicians are using "this big anthropogenic climate change revelation" to push their agendas rather than it standing on its own merits, how people claim the IPCC is all a scam designed to funnel money to poor nations and rake in trillions in taxes? Is that the kind of accusation you think would be going on? I bet someone would even hack into their email servers and select the most spin-able quotes to blog about, trying to persuade everybody that the whole thing is a big scam being perpetrated by the physicists. Wait a second, all that is stuff that deniers have done to the climate science community because those denialists reject the consensus of AGW!

Well no matter, let's roll with your scenario. Let's come up with some conspiracy theory equivalent for the neutrino experiment. ...I actually cannot think of any industrial monetary interest behind a fraudulent CERN/OPERA result, but I can think of plenty of vested interests in delaying any type of CO2 regulations on the part of fossil fuels industries. And they do spend millions on just that kind of lobbying and propaganda every year, with the main critics of AGW being attached to their anti-regulation think-tanks and front groups. Some of those same people and orgs were backed by the tobacco industry to FUD up information on the dangers of smoking, including testifying before Congress that nicotine isn't addictive. None of this is what-if or let's-imagine-for-a-moment, it's fact.

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This theory of cosmic rays influencing the earths temperature survived its empirical test in the lab: cosmic rays can indeed cause nucleation.

Apparently you didn't read the article you're replying to. They did not cause nucleation. The scales involved in the CLOUD experiment are much smaller than what's required to have nucleating particles. Please make a note for future reference and amend yourself accordingly.

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Lots more research is needed, but right now, cosmic rays are a hypothesis that can explain the "global warming" just as much as the "dirty evil humans cause climate change and need to pay taxes on air" theory.

Again, the evidence cited in this very article disagrees with your conclusion. I don't know where the fuck you're pulling all this stuff from, but it's wrong.

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In other words, the science isn't settled, despite cries of "how dare you go against the consensus!" I for one think that if you try to use a consensus argument to drive out the heretics, you are not a real scientist nor fan of science.

Derp derp, "heretics!" Someone's got a persecution complex going. Let me put it to you that you're not a real scientist nor fan of science if you think you can, today, say:

Quote:

This theory of cosmic rays influencing the earths temperature survived its empirical test in the lab: cosmic rays can indeed cause nucleation. Lots more research is needed, but right now, cosmic rays are a hypothesis that can explain the "global warming" just as much as the "dirty evil humans cause climate change and need to pay taxes on air" theory.

Because not only does that contain factual errors a cursory read should have corrected, it also doesn't jibe with the totality of the evidence accumulated on the subject. What you're doing is saying that it's true despite the strength of the evidence, not because of it.

Except, see, you are all wrong. Scientific consensus is not a club to say "shut up, stupid." Look at the speed of light stuff from CERN. There isn't a more "consensus" based scientific theory than nothing with mass can reach the speed of light or beyond. Until CERN may have shown otherwise. Are they "trolling?" If they were treated like climate change science is treated, we'd all be calling to see if they were funded by Big Tachyon and the evil Spock Brothers, with their vested interest in the warp drive industry.

Except CERN has quantifiable data to back up their claims, they have published their complete methods for scrutiny, and are prepared (in fact *expecting*) to be proven wrong. Can you say the same about yourself when you tout your "theories"?

Brutha wrote:

This theory of cosmic rays influencing the earths temperature survived its empirical test in the lab: cosmic rays can indeed cause nucleation. Lots more research is needed, but right now, cosmic rays are a hypothesis that can explain the "global warming" just as much as the "dirty evil humans cause climate change and need to pay taxes on air" theory.

Uhh... did you not read the article? Because it unambiguously debunked the nucleation theory, and explained why it's NOT sufficient to influence Earth's temperature significantly. Pretty much the whole article's conclusion is that cosmic rays are NOT a hypothesis that can explain global warning just as much as the "dirty evil humans cause climate change and need to pay taxes on air" theory.

Why can't we be having an effect that is intertwined with a cycle that is driven by solar wind that involves all of the other aspects of galactic & solar weather that the earth's weather is..more or less 'within'?

We are, except the contributions from the "cycle that is driven by solar wind that involves all of the other aspects of galactic & solar weather" are tiny compared to contributions from greenhouse gases. That's the point of this article, to put things into perspective. Quotes like "a 15 percent increase in cosmic rays (which is about the variation in one 11-year solar cycle) leads to an increase in condensation nuclei of less than 0.2 percent" should give you a clue.

Valis wrote:

Also since our yearly climate change lags a few months in regards to the earth's wobble (hot months & cold months tend to follow, not end with, the solstices) why must there be a 100% correlation between a solar cycle and observed weather on the earth...?

It's possible, why don't you do the math and find out exactly what correlation there is? Again, the article's point is, people have done the math, and they found no (very weak) correlation of any kind.

The climate of the earth is going to fluctuate no matter what the cause. I'm doing whatever I can to reduce pollution and habitat loss instead. These are the key things we need to focus on. They are the two main ways we are having an impact on the earth: we're turning the planet into a shit-hole for our children. Concentrate on these two undeniable problems and a by-product of these actions would be that the anthropogenic contributions to climate change are reduced.

Now go and dig up a section of your manicured lawn and plant some wildflowers in it. No need to add any fertilisers or pesticides...

Only prob there is that the large bulk cargo ships can output more pollution than all the cars in several US states combined, mostly due to using shit scraped out of the bottom of the oil barrel that isnt thick enough to be used as a road surface.

I'm sure there are lots of things that can cause global climate change, whether the change is warming, cooling, or blasting the atmosphere away in a super-heated CME. Whatever - it's a big universe. We have no idea about most of what's out there.

Here on Earth, meanwhile, the thing that denialists won't admit is that the current gradual warming trend is apparently due to our dumping mass quantities of previously sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, which is a closed system.

Killwize wrote:

...The AGW fanboys...

Oh, so now people who believe the scientific consensus are fanboys? This whole argument just keeps getting stupider.

Except, see, you are all wrong. Scientific consensus is not a club to say "shut up, stupid." Look at the speed of light stuff from CERN. There isn't a more "consensus" based scientific theory than nothing with mass can reach the speed of light or beyond. Until CERN may have shown otherwise. Are they "trolling?" If they were treated like climate change science is treated, we'd all be calling to see if they were funded by Big Tachyon and the evil Spock Brothers, with their vested interest in the warp drive industry.

This theory of cosmic rays influencing the earths temperature survived its empirical test in the lab: cosmic rays can indeed cause nucleation. Lots more research is needed, but right now, cosmic rays are a hypothesis that can explain the "global warming" just as much as the "dirty evil humans cause climate change and need to pay taxes on air" theory.

In other words, the science isn't settled, despite cries of "how dare you go against the consensus!" I for one think that if you try to use a consensus argument to drive out the heretics, you are not a real scientist nor fan of science.

Edited for grammer

No, actually I'm right, and it is you who are mistaken. Your mistakenness, and that of your fellow denialists, has been spelled out so explicitly, so many times, including right here in this very thread, that your sincerity and credibility are both extremely questionable.

No, actually I'm right, and it is you who are mistaken. Your mistakenness, and that of your fellow denialists, has been spelled out so explicitly, so many times, including right here in this very thread, that your sincerity and credibility are both extremely questionable.

Actually no, social success does not determine truth. However true anthropogenic global warming theories are, it will not be because the idea has social success, it will be because the idea most adequately explains the facts at hand. Arguing for or against a theory based on a persons credibility (known as an anthropogenic argument) or its social success (known as an appeal to convention) are both flawed reasoning. However questionable your opponents reasoning is, you only debase yourself by using arguments which are themselves flawed.

Only prob there is that the large bulk cargo ships can output more pollution than all the cars in several US states combined, mostly due to using shit scraped out of the bottom of the oil barrel that isnt thick enough to be used as a road surface.

Is there a good reference about how much CO2 or other emissions are produced by each industry/transportation type? How much from heavy manufacturing, private cars, jet travel, shipping, trucking, etc? One of my concerns has always been that any pollution tax (CO2, particle emissions, etc.) will get pushed down onto us "little people" who can't afford lobbyists, while more wealthy industries will be able to get exemptions, thus pushing forward small gains at a great cost to the many vs. greater gains with shared costs by everyone.And of course, the traditional prisoner's dilemma. It's better for all of us to reduce any pollution across the board, but it's better for US industry and shipping (or replace US with your nation) to not impose such regulations. We see that with the race to the bottom competing with China and other nations that have less stringent pollution regulations. Unfortunately, it will be easier to herd cats of all species than to set up a robust international framework for reducing such emissions, as we saw at Copenhagen. Oh, how our species so desperately needs cheap, safe, and clean energy sources.

Note to Ars editor: Is it possible to change the picture for the NinjaVideo Queen article? It's rather disturbing and distracting sitting in the article bar below while I am attempting to type in the comment box. Thanks

Solar power will help lots, no sure why some people are pissed at Obama for funding a startup company for a new Solar Tube process. So the economy went in the dumper. I really believe that is part of the reason they failed.

The reason people are pissed is the company never had a decent business plan to begin with, but since they were very large Obama donors, they loan guarantee was pushed through regardless of concerns regarding the company's viability.

This theory of cosmic rays influencing the earths temperature survived its empirical test in the lab: cosmic rays can indeed cause nucleation. Lots more research is needed, but right now, cosmic rays are a hypothesis that can explain the "global warming" just as much as the "dirty evil humans cause climate change and need to pay taxes on air" theory.

This is a fairly characteristic example of the sort of misleading argument one encounters from self-styled AGW "skeptics." You set up a straw man, giving the expression that the idea that cosmic rays can cause nucleation is a novel idea, not previously considered by climate scientists, when in fact this has long been known: indeed, one of the oldest technologies for detecting and tracking energetic particles is a "cloud chamber"--which relies upon the well-established ability of charged particles to do just that. In reality, the scientific question was not whether cosmic rays can cause nucleation, but whether it does so to an extent that would have an appreciable impact on climate (which the recent CERN study does not even address).

Secondly, you treat that one study as if it somehow puts the "cosmic rays cause warming" on an equal evidentiary basis with the warming effect of CO2--even though, as is well documented, changes in cosmic ray flux do not in fact track the global warming trend, whereas there is a huge amount of evidence going back decades to support the role of CO2--some of which is referenced here:http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html

Only prob there is that the large bulk cargo ships can output more pollution than all the cars in several US states combined, mostly due to using shit scraped out of the bottom of the oil barrel that isnt thick enough to be used as a road surface.

I don't know about the absolute amounts of CO2 emissions from shipping, but my understanding is that shipping is a very efficient form of transport. Certainly the large marine diesel engines themselves can be quite efficient: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine

But I suspect that for other kinds of emissions, especially particulates and NOx, shipping is relatively dirty.

The reason people are pissed is the company never had a decent business plan to begin with, but since they were very large Obama donors, they loan guarantee was pushed through regardless of concerns regarding the company's viability.

I don't know the details of Solyndra's business plan, but I do know that private investors put hundreds of millions of dollars into the firm. I assume at least some of them did some due diligence, which makes me skeptical of your statement.

I think it more likely that the firm failed in large part due to the lack of demand due the weak economies in the US and Europe, and competition from heavily subsidized Chinese manufacturers.

The reason people are pissed is the company never had a decent business plan to begin with, but since they were very large Obama donors, they loan guarantee was pushed through regardless of concerns regarding the company's viability.

The company was NOT an Obama donor.

George Kaiser was a "fundraiser and bundler" for the Obama campaign; I find no credible claims that he personally was a donor. Two investment funds that are major investors (total 35% ownership - not controlling interest) in Solyndra, the George Kaiser Family Foundation and Argonaut Private Equity, have close ties to George Kaiser but they did not donate to the Obama campaign.

Of course that doesn't keep Glenn Beck from drawing lines on his chalkboard, or Faux News from blurring the lines between everything and everybody named Kaiser.

The company originally had a reasonable business plan, but it was overtaken by Chinese companies heavily subsidized by their government.

Actually no, social success does not determine truth. However true anthropogenic global warming theories are, it will not be because the idea has social success, it will be because the idea most adequately explains the facts at hand. Arguing for or against a theory based on a persons credibility (known as an anthropogenic argument) or its social success (known as an appeal to convention) are both flawed reasoning. However questionable your opponents reasoning is, you only debase yourself by using arguments which are themselves flawed.

I've never heard of an "anthropogenic argument," and neither has Google.

I think the point Spazmodica was making is that the article above, and the research that it refers to, does *not* support the notion that variations in cosmic ray intensity cause significant variations in cloud cover, and thus climate. Look at the right hand side of the graph above. See how the cosmic ray curve deviates from the cloud cover curve? That's data, not popularity or personal authority.

I find it frustrating that AGW skeptics bolster their claims on one hand by citing the few scientists (or statisticians, bloggers, whatever) they agree with, and on the other hand, attacking the notion that a scientific consensus (that is, the opinion of most of the scientists in a field) is meaningful.

The reason people are pissed is the company never had a decent business plan to begin with, but since they were very large Obama donors, they loan guarantee was pushed through regardless of concerns regarding the company's viability.

The company was NOT an Obama donor.

George Kaiser was a "fundraiser and bundler" for the Obama campaign; I find no credible claims that he personally was a donor. Two investment funds that are major investors (total 35% ownership - not controlling interest) in Solyndra, the George Kaiser Family Foundation and Argonaut Private Equity, have close ties to George Kaiser but they did not donate to the Obama campaign.

Of course that doesn't keep Glenn Beck from drawing lines on his chalkboard, or Faux News from blurring the lines between everything and everybody named Kaiser.

The company originally had a reasonable business plan, but it was overtaken by Chinese companies heavily subsidized by their government.

If all that is true (and it may very well be), then the lesson to take away is, don't invest money in risky startups, that you you can't afford to lose. How much money can our government (we the people) afford to lose? I'm looking at my 10 year old kid now, and I'm telling you; when it comes time, he ain't gonna pay it.

If all that is true (and it may very well be), then the lesson to take away is, don't invest money in risky startups, that you you can't afford to lose. How much money can our government (we the people) afford to lose? I'm looking at my 10 year old kid now, and I'm telling you; when it comes time, he ain't gonna pay it.

Yeah... all we have to do to get rid of the national debt is to not loan money to 28,000 Solyndras.

Nor should we subsidize any "risky" companies the way every other country we're competing with does. We can't afford it.

The national debt is about 60% of GDP. This is not at all an unsustainable situation; the country is not "broke", IF we are willing to do what it takes to reverse the current upward trend. ("Pay it off" is not viable; countries' national debts are not like personal debt.)

At the end of World War II it was over 100% - and we the people paid almost all of that off, got it down to about 25% of GDP in 1980, thanks to a variety of policies that included very high income tax rates on the top brackets (which were gradually reduced as the debt was reduced). Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Feder ... -2010_.jpg

Funny but those high tax rates did not seem to keep anyone from creating jobs during that period; most of it is fondly remembered as a boom time. (Note, for example, that the top Federal income tax bracket was 74% when Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft and Steves Jobs and Wozniak started Apple; the fear of high tax rates didn't seem to bother them.)

If all that is true (and it may very well be), then the lesson to take away is, don't invest money in risky startups, that you you can't afford to lose. How much money can our government (we the people) afford to lose? I'm looking at my 10 year old kid now, and I'm telling you; when it comes time, he ain't gonna pay it.

I don't think this makes any sense. Investing in any new technology is risky, but without investment, new technology will never reach the commercial stage. While I'm not in favor of the government losing money, I think that in some areas the government should make a range of investments in the hope that some will pay off. Just like any other investor.

It's not surprising that the initial results for this cosmic ray theory are not looking so good. After all, other scientists have been very skeptical of cosmic rays causing cloud cover changes ever since it was first proposed, because the already existing theories of involving greenhouse gases match the observed data very well. If cosmic rays had as much of an effect on the climate as being proposed in this theory, we would have to find some other way to explain the huge corellation between scientific observations, and highly detailed theories centered around human inputs of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

I recently read an article about one of the first lengthy papers about global warming published in late 70s. Even at this early stage, greenhouse-gas based models predicted temperatures that very closely match current observations. A lot of very smart, dedicated people have been working on this issue for years. There was perhaps a time, perhaps 20 or more years ago when you could say that there was still some small room for reasonable doubt in the scientific results.

There is none now. The detractors on global warming latch onto weird theories like this one on cosmic rays in a foolish attempt to explain away solid predictions and results that have stood up to scrutiny for more than 30 years and are now widely accepted by more than 95% of climate scientists.

Its is plenty obvious that climate change deniers wouldn't like the results no matter how it is presented to them. They attach all sorts of negative labels to it, such as "conspiracy" or "lies" or "alarmist" ad nauseum. The fossil fuel companies are happy to fund the same sort of "scientists" that published studies claiming that cigarettes were good for your heath, spouting technical sounding nonsense to debunk real scientific findings. Then these fools, especially on the right or with fundamentalist religious views, latch eagerly onto this pablum so that they don't ever have to question anything they believe in.

It's simply not true that new evidence is going to result in wildly different conclusions about global warming than we already have. The current work is now scoping out the sheer magnitude of the coming disaster, and perhaps to find ways to mitigate it before it causes too much havoc.

I'm pretty sure than in less than ten years we will be forced into some hugely expensive efforts to deal with the effects of the climate changes. You can beleive the science now, or you can be forced into it later whether you want to or not. Unfortunately, too many people are sheep easily persuaded by all the pablum on Faux News and the failure of mass media to expose the detractors as the phonies they really are.